Action Research Project

(First Grade)
C AT H E R I N E K E E T E R

Initial Meeting With Teacher

Student A
Middle tier of the class
ELL students
Needs assistance with fluency, decoding, and
comprehension skills
Student B

Middle tier of the class

ELL students
Needs assistance with fluency, decoding, and
comprehension skills

Action Research Question

How can Student A and Student Bs

fluency and decoding skills be

developed to improve their
comprehension abilities?

Research
Fluency

Oral reading with feedback

Repeated Readings
Listening to tape recorded readings

Decoding

Pattern Recognition
Prefixes and Suffixes
Chunk words into sections
Study word families

Comprehension

For struggling readers, weak decoding skills and lack

of fluency are major impediments to comprehension
(Mckenna & Labbo, 2013, pg. 76).

Initial Assessment
Session 1
Prior to assessment:
Observed Readings
Discussions with Mrs.
Jordan

Initial Assessment
Student B
Initial
Assessment
Student A
0

Session 2
Skill Focus: Fluency
Strategy: Repeated Readings,
Student A:
Read smoother with each repeated reading
Great expression
Student B:

Struggled with proper rate and expression

Benefited from examples and non-examples

Session 3
Skill Focus: Comprehension
Strategy: Guided students to look back at the text for answers
Both Student A and Student B answered all comprehension question

correctly

Session 4
Skill Focus: Decoding
Strategy: Chunking
Both students were able to find smaller words within the big words
Student A was enthusiastic about learning decoding strategies while

Student B was uninterested

Final Assessment

Final Assessment Data

Final Assessment

Final Assessment

Instructional Changes
Fluency strips were introduced to cater to

Student Bs lack of fluency skills

Student A was encouraged to enjoy the action
research process by choosing the passages
they wanted to read

Student showed enthusiasm when they became more

involved with the process
Wanted to do more work each day

Reflection
Student As comprehension skills greatly improved

when they were able to use the decoding

strategies they learned

Continue reading short passages

Introduce new comprehension strategies

Asking questions before, after, and while you read

Context clues

Student Bs expression and rate improved upon

hearing examples and non-examples of fluency

Supply student with higher level passages

Have student continue to read aloud to increase fluency

skills

Resources
National Institute for Literacy. Key Literacy Component:

Decoding. All About Adolescent Literacy. (2007). Retrieved

October 11, 2015.
McKenna, M., & Labbo, L. (2013). International Handbook of
Literacy and Technology Volume II. Hoboken: Taylor and
Francis.
Rasinski, T., & Lems, K. (2012). Fluency Instruction: ResearchBased Best Practices. Second Edition. New York, New York:
Guilford Press.
Reading Rockets. Developing Fluent Readers. (n.d). Retrieved
October 11, 2015
Reading Rockets. Fluency. (n.d). Retrieved October 11, 2015.
Reading Rockets. Word Decoding and Phonics. (n.d.).
Retrieved October 11, 2015.